


First Thought When I Wake

by benrumo



Series: Inquisitor Cesare Lavellan Desperately Tries Not to Ruin Everything [4]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Backstory, Bittersweet, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-19
Updated: 2015-01-19
Packaged: 2018-03-08 01:23:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3190556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/benrumo/pseuds/benrumo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happened in the time between when Dorian left Tevinter and when he first met the Inquisitor? Heavy focus on Dorian and Felix's friendship, light focus on Dorian's relationship with the Inquisitor.</p><p>(Works in series are not sequential, just same-universe.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Thought When I Wake

The year you turn twenty is the year you begin your apprenticeship under Magister Alexius. Your father could not be more proud. This is where your future begins, he tells you. Before you know it, you’ll be a Magister. You’ll do the family proud, carry on in his footsteps. This is just the beginning.

You can’t bring yourself to tell your father that his dreams for you are never going to come true. Not now, not after he looked at you with such joy in his eyes when they bestowed the rank of Senior Enchanter on you. So you do the right thing. You report when ordered to Magister Alexius’ house.

Back in the Circle, nervous mages twittered like song birds about what one had to look forward to in an apprenticeship. Which mentors were the most demanding, which were the most desired among the ambitious, rumors about the severe punishments one apprentice received after she destroyed a valuable enchantment and set a priceless tome on fire. No mage entered apprenticeship without at least idle worries about what fate had in store for them.

Alexius was demanding and absolutely ruthless in the correction of mistakes. One look was all it took to break you of the arrogant belief that you could ever actually deserve to be his apprentice. Your continued existence depended solely on his good will, and Maker, but you wanted nothing more than to continue your tutelage under him. He was brilliant and creative in a way you never imagined possible in the construction of magic. It makes you fall in love with magic all over again. For the first time in years, you find yourself excited about what the future holds in store for you. This is what you were made for. You could dedicate your life to nothing but this and it would be a life more than well-spent.

You also fell in love with Alexius’ son, a boy some two years younger than you. You’d met him long before you began your apprenticeship, of course. There were only so many noble houses. The faces at the Altus parties grew familiar tediously fast.

You still manage to find a few hopeful prospects for a night’s fun, however, part through tenacity and part through desperation. During one such fete you find yourself in an abandoned back hallway with an Antivan second cousin of someone’s. This has become such a familiar dance that you barely even think about the opening steps any longer.

You’re drunk and stupid, flying high on the rush of your own accomplishments. It was bound to happen sooner or later, your spectacular fall from grace.

When you see Alexius’ son over the shoulder of the man whose arse you’re grabbing, you think it’s all over. The rush of the past several weeks comes to a crashing halt. You throw the drunk Antivan off of you and struggle to remember Alexius’ son’s name. Begging a man to keep your secrets does so lose its charm when you can’t even beg him by name.

You’re still standing there with your mouth gaping open like a hooked fish when Felix smiles and claps you heartily on the shoulder.

_I’d apologize for interrupting, but I think I’ve done you a favor. I hear our Antivan friend winces when he goes to piss. You know how those southerners are, no healers to speak of. Still, best not to risk it, I think._

You spend the next week worrying about what his silence is going to cost you. When you finally get up the guts to confront him, he gives you that same smile and states in no uncertain terms that it makes no difference to him who you bed.

This is hardly the first time you’ve had a man express similar sentiments, of course. The Circle wasn’t exactly a chaste place. Young mages were expected to entertain themselves by whatever means they had at their disposal, so long as it didn’t result in any undue scandal, of course. But even there you were tolerated at best, and such expressions of approval always came with an equally firm expression of _so long as it’s not me you take an interest in_.

With Felix there were no threats, even those that men always feel are in their best interests. You assumed at first that this meant there were expectations, that his silence was driven by his interest, but time proved Felix was as uninterested in men as you were in women. You suppose it would have proved no hardship, bedding Felix to maintain your position, but as you never would have pursued him on your own you find it to be fortuitous if rather unexpected turn of events.

More time passes. More parties come and go. You expected that he would at least make a habit of keeping his distance if nothing else, but your expectations are defied once again. He makes a point of seeking you out. This would be perfectly respectable and even expected had events not conspired as they did that fateful night with the Antivan. It made sense for the two of you to become companionable. After all, you were his father’s apprentice. Negotiating an apprenticeship was always a good way to build ties between houses, second only to the negotiation of a marriage. That Alexius has a son your age only improves the bargain, from an outsider’s perspective. But Alexius’ dedication to his academic pursuits quickly proved to you that had he any political interests he would have invested them elsewhere rather than saddling himself with some politically convenient dullard. Also helping his case was the fact that he neglected to introduce you to Felix entirely.

Much to your surprise, you find yourself falling into an amiable companionship with Felix, one which involves the two of you making a game out of criticizing the other’s courtship rituals. The winner is of course judged by who ends the evening successfully seducing whoever had caught their eye. You actually find that you’re enjoying yourself outside of a library for once, and not just because these parties usually involve you winding up in a broom closet with some bloke’s hand down your trousers. It’s a crass but delightful game, one that distracts you from the disappointment that inevitably catches up to you after yet another night of skin-deep connection.

When you’re not out in public playing the game, you’re discussing history, politics, and magic in the rare moments when you catch one another alone. He distracts you from your studies with sweets pilfered from the kitchen. You proofread his essays, clinically striking out errors in his runes while regaling him with tales from your own final year of Circle training.

You find in him a common spirit. It’s heartening, not just the sense of commonality in interest but to find it in someone your own age. Gereon Alexius is not ignorant of your politics. Had they not aligned well enough with his own, you would never have been chosen as his apprentice. But in Felix you think you’ve found more than an ally. You think you may have found someone to brave the future with. Though two years separates you, once he has reached the rank of Senior Enchanter and begun his own apprenticeship the years will mean little and less. When your time comes to fight for the future of your nation, Felix will be there to fight with you.

You think Felix may be the first real friend you’ve ever had. Calling Felix your friend almost seems an insult after all the lesser men you’ve assigned the title to over the years, yet you can think of no better term. You feel yourself not simply enjoying Felix’s company, but growing to rely on it. You feel your life improved for having him in it. This of course raises the disturbing possibility that your life would be less without him. That knowledge sits uneasy in your mind. It’s a new threat, one you’re unsure how to handle.

You ask Felix once about his other friends, scared on top of everything else that perhaps your feelings for him are somehow wrong, tainted by your favoring men even if you’ve no desire for him. It feels forbidden, dangerous even, caring for another person this much. You’re subtle enough to disguise your real query for a while, but that ends promptly when he comes to the mistaken conclusion that you’ve fallen for one of the mages in his year.

Oh, that was a long and awkward conversation. You try and explain your fear, but you’re hampered by your lifelong instinct to disguise and downplay all sentiment. All you find yourself doing is reassuring him that you’re in no way attracted to him.

He eventually manages to wring the truth out of you. It takes a few glasses of wine and a firm smack upside the head, but you disclose your fears. To your surprise, you found it was a fear he shared. Not precisely the same fear, of course, but the same question about what it meant to love another human being.

_It’s not supposed to be like this, is it? I mean, as boys you swear you’ll be friends forever. Cut your fingers, trade blood. Did you ever do that? But when you’re an adult it’s supposed to be about alliances and securing your future and…_

_Convenient,_ you supply. _It’s supposed to be convenient._

 _I don’t care if you’re convenient. I want you in my life. Permanently. It actually made me wonder once if I really did fancy you and was just lying to myself about it,_ he admits, rubbing his shaved head shyly. _Stupid, I know, but… Thank the Maker at least one of us has a little initiative. I was going crazy trying to figure it all out on my own._

Marriage, it seems, is a dark cloud lurking over both of your futures. He fears an unloving wife just as keenly as you do. Knowing what it means to want someone in your life makes it all the harder to marry someone you don’t.

_Could you imagine it, though? Loving someone like this and wanting them to share your bed with them every night? All those sappy love stories start to make sense when you think about it that way. If you were a fit woman, I don’t think I’d ever be able to bring myself to let you out of my sight._

_Maker, I… I’m not sure I can imagine it,_ you say honestly.

_Shouldn’t be too hard for you. Just imagine actually wanting to sleep with me. Think of how bad I’ve got it, only having you as my starting point._

_My stomach’s in enough knots without that image in my head, thank you,_ you grumble, shoving his grinning mug out of your face.

 _If that’s what it’s like, though…_ he continues, batting your hand away. _True love, I mean. If it’s really like that… I wasn’t even sure I could feel as much for a person as I do you. To feel all that and more… Do you really think it could be like that?_ he asks as if actually scared of your answer. You can’t blame him. The thought scares you too. A love like that, it could consume a man. You’re no student of literature, but you seem to recall there being more than one classic tale where that very thing occurred. Fools in the name of love, as history remembers them. The last thing you ever wanted from life was to be branded a fool.

_Maybe. Or maybe becoming an adult means accepting that we’re damn lucky we found friendship. Maybe we should stop expecting more._

_Maybe_ , he admits with a sad smile. _But if that’s true, I don’t think I’m ready to be an adult._

_Me either._

You make a vow to each other that night. You vow that you will never wed for convenience and dedicate yourselves to the pursuit of love in all its forms. You cheekily point out that your love for your work with his father puts you one step above him, making you as ever the senior in all things. That leaves him grousing about his upcoming examinations, but it lightens the mood spectacularly.

You don’t speak much about love after that, but something between you has been changed. Better put, it is perhaps not changed but renewed. The game you play at parties takes on a new dimension. You start playing matchmaker and wingman. You push one another towards prospects not for an evening but for a lifetime. It never leads to anything, but you keep to your vow and remain eternally optimistic.

Your twenty second year is when the illusions all come crashing down.

It’s the year of love. Paired twos, a fortuitous omen. Your mother and father both wed the year they were twenty two. The pressure skyrockets. You spend your birthday fending off less than subtle proposals. Irritation is an itch at the back of your skull that grows with each flirtatious comment. All you can do to scratch it is throw more wine down your gullet, for what little comfort that affords you.

You manage to hold out right up to the moment when you realize that it’s only going to get worse from here. You’re twenty two now. You always said you would make your stand when push came to shove, and now with Felix as your stalwart ally you see no reason to delay.

You demand everyone’s attention. You have an announcement to make. Conversation slowly dies down as eyes turn towards you. Someone stops the band.

Your father’s eyes meet yours and damn him! Damn you both!

You hesitate. You’re nothing but a childish, drunken coward, desperate to defy your father and everything he stands for.

You don’t remember what you said exactly, but it was something to the effect that you were not prepared to accept any romantic advances at the moment. Thank you kindly, but I’ll be buggering off now. Do try the ham. It tastes deliciously of despair. How many slaves do you think the caterer sacrificed to divine that apt dining choice?

You leave the party, unwilling to give them the chance to ask their questions. You can’t hold up under their scrutiny. You’re barely holding together as is. Your drunkard’s courage has fully abandoned you, leaving you in that brand of dire melancholy a man often finds at the very bottom of his cups.

You think not for the first time that your father has every right to his shame. It’s all you have for yourself at this moment.

Felix knocks at your door until you unbar it just to yell at him. He takes it with such patience and understanding that you feel all the more the ass.

 _It will get better one day,_ he says. _We’ll make it better. Even if it’s just the two of us against the entire Imperium._

He sits there with you until dawn, letting you get it all out of your system. Force him to suffer through detailed retellings of each futile attempt at courting you’d been subjected to that evening while he helps you empty the fresh bottle of wine he’d brought. The more wine you drink, the more fantastic your stories get, but even when thoroughly drunk Felix won’t believe that a one eyed old crone offered to rub your feet daily in return for your youthful hand.

When your tales run dry, you turn to listing every man you wish you would have been courted by. Mainly because Felix is the only one you can ever say these things aloud to. Felix, as always, winces not at your interest in men but at your exceptionally poor taste, a flaw he is always willing to point out. He counters every fictional suitor with some complaint, generally in the form of a much better man for you to futilely lust after. That night, he was dead set on the thought that you should have danced with Victor Leith. Felix listed off all his accolades. Smart, funny, handsome, and twenty two. The most eligible bachelor in the room. Besides yourself, of course. You list off his faults. Not quite as smart as he thinks he is, arrogant enough to sink his entire family, cheats at cards, and in possession of oddly fat ankles.

You also slept with him two seasons past. Once is all you get in Tevinter. It’s all he’d ever want from you.

Dawn finds the two of you snoring drunkenly on the rug by the fire, the buckles and belts of your stiff formal robes tugged and loosened until you could almost pass for comfortable. When he’d started to doze, you’d suggested waking a slave to help him retire in one of the guest rooms. You knew the risk, knew what it would look like. There had been rumors about you for years, and after last night…

But Felix had insisted. He would stay right where he was. He wanted to make a stand, said that it didn’t matter what people thought. All that should matter is the truth. The truth that you were a good man, that no one could ever be tainted by association with you because you were nothing to be ashamed of.

Your father found the two of you in the morning, presumably not long after one of the slaves came in to summon you for him. He was more than ready to believe that you’d tainted not just Felix with your perversion that night, but also your entire future. That you’d dare risk your apprenticeship by dallying with the son of your mentor was, in his eyes, the greatest of your many crimes.

It sickens you. It all sounded so simple, so obviously _right_ , the night before. The truth is all that should matter. But this is Tevinter, where blood magic is illegal yet slaves disappear every day.

You get Felix out of the house, eager to spare him the fallout. He deserves better, and you have to do this yourself. If you are going to wage this war, you can’t run from the first battle. You engage your father with every weapon at your disposal, but the end result can only be optimistically called a stalemate. The whole morning is one ugly, brutal affair.

That night you fall asleep wondering what other surface truths of your life are just convenient lies. Your father always told you that blood magic was the refuge of the weak mind, but everyone knows you don’t last long in the Magisterium without power. What has Magister Pavus done to keep his seat these long years? It takes more than blood. Well, it takes more than his blood.

Lies maintained because they’re the right thing to do, because they keep up appearances, keep things running smoothly. Lies, perhaps, like _I love you_.

When Cyriace warns you about your father’s plans, you run and don’t look back.

You pass your twenty third birthday dancing in the ballroom of a man whose name you barely remembered even then.

Money, something you’d never in your life given a second thought, was tight and grew tighter still. You turn to whoring yourself, not on the streets but in the noble houses of Orleisan courts. It is the most flagrant slap in your father’s face that you can devise given your limited means. Halward Pavus’ runaway heir playing the dandy in gaudy Orlais. And really, it’s the same game you’ve been playing all your life, only now with the added novelty of masks. Do you recognize the voice of the man under you? Your accent makes your own mask stuffy and pointless. Maker save the Orleisans from their poor fashion choices.

Felix manages to find you. You don’t think too hard about how because that leads to the awful question of whether or not your father knows where you are. Felix sends you letters sometimes, but you’ve only ever once replied. Even when you learned he’d contracted the blight, you couldn’t bring yourself to brave Tevinter again. Coward, through and through. You drunken, selfish coward. You broke your vow. You have no right to him now.

You become a kept man of a certain Marquis DuFreis. His status protects you from the ever-vigilant eyes of the southern Templars, a boon you are more than grateful for. You still have waking nightmares about the night some beast of a man thought it would be _exciting_ to use his lyrium abilities on you in bed. The shock of it was like having a piece of your very heart cut apart with the force of a guillotine falling. It left you reeling. He pressed his advantage while you stood there feeling for all the world as if you were half-dead, one calloused hand on the back of your neck as he forced you down on the bed. You nearly broke your neck to break his nose.

Needless to say that caused something of a stir. Blood in the sheets. So hard to wash out.

Scorned and out of his mask, Deniaud made a point of hunting you. Overnight you’d gone from a party favor expected only to speak when it would spark up the evening for your host to a social corruption, an intellectual contagion. Your friends, already few enough, rapidly became fewer. You learned in those few weeks that the southern Templars held the south in an iron grip of respect and fear. They don’t tell you that in the history books.

What surprised you most was not having the mask of high southern life ripped aside to reveal the barbaric face underneath. You knew you could never trust these backwater countries, knew that you would always be an outsider here. There was no loss to feel when society betrayed you. What surprised you most was the nature of your trumped up crime. _Apostate._ You were a fully trained mage, a Senior Enchanter heralding from the Circle in Minrathos. You apprenticed directly under the First Enchanter. Yet here they dare call you apostate. The irony of it is harder for you to swallow than the thought of what would become of you if they managed to lock you up in one of their grim towers.

Your amulet could have made all of it go away. Proof of your blood, your wretched family. But you sold it.

This is what you wanted, isn’t it? To be free from the gilded cage of your lineage.

You really thought it was over. Running away from home, pretending it was all some grand adventure. This is where the story ends, crushed under the heel of cruel men with unnatural abilities and the single-minded ferocity of hunting dogs.

But then Marquis DuFreis, a man you had only met in passing, invited you to his chateau for a week-long fete and the Templars quietly went away. The Marquis never spoke of what transpired and you never asked. You didn’t want to know how your Circle training was confirmed. What would be worse, seeing your father’s name on the documents or not seeing it?

When one of the Marquis’ servants kindly points out that the ornate cabinent in the corner of your room is spacious enough to house _all_ of your belongings, you put on a good face and obediently store your staff away. The cabinet was never locked, but the intent was clear.

By the time you turn twenty four, Orlais has left nothing but a sour taste in your mouth. Likely the result of the uncountable number of pricks you serviced until your tongue was laced with what little they had to give. The novelty of giving your body openly has worn down into a habitual pursuit. The exotic flair you’re expected to provide at parties leaves you feeling even more the actor than you did back home. You grow weary of retelling the same tales of Tevinter, stories just controversial enough to make the evening memorable. Never honesty. Tevinter’s best and worst sides are equally taboo. You exist to titillate. You are genuinely starting to worry that your mind is atrophying from disuse.

You miss Felix more dearly than words can do justice. Your heart sits still and heavy in your chest with the knowledge that you will never again be gifted with someone who loves you as he did. It amazes you that the loss of one man can leave you feeling lonelier than the loss of your home and your country. But then, Felix was always the best that Tevinter had to offer.

You think you might run again. But to where? To the mongrels in the east and their dogs? You’ve always gotten along well with dogs. You have managed to go your entire life having only been bitten once. This was mostly accomplished by maintaining a healthy distance from the animals. Once was well enough, thank you.

Thank the Maker this is when Felix chooses to send you another hopeful letter, one that contains his most brief missive to date: _I’m in Ferelden and I need your help. Please come. This is the last thing I can likely hope to accomplish in my life, and I can’t do it without you._

The first thing Felix does when he sees you is punch you. The second thing he does is call you a stupid fucking bastard. Then come the hugs. He’s angry with you. Furious, even. Yet somehow the two of you fall back into companionable familiarity in the space of a single instant. Maybe forever is real.

Felix disapproves quite strongly of your Orleisan life. Squandering your freedom, he calls it. He doesn’t understand just how bloody awful southerners are. You tell him they’re just as boring and dull-witted as travelers always warned you they were, that the Orleisan men were just as gaudy as their hook-nosed masks. He doesn’t believe you.

You tell him about being trapped under a Templar’s silence, not just to prove your point but to warn him what it means to live in this barbarous land. If the corruption in his blood hadn’t already driven the color from his face, you’d swear that would have done it.

You don’t ask how long. You don’t have to. With the blight you can never tell, everyone knows that.

 _Doesn’t matter,_ he says. _Alright, that’s a lie. It matters. But there’s something that matters more._

That’s when he tells you about his father’s plans.

Felix has been dead more than a year by the time you turn twenty six. He died happy, according to the posthumous letter you received shortly after the funeral, having accomplished that last great thing with you at his side.

He spent some time at Skyhold before the end. You fought with the jailer until the Inquisitor himself intervened and allowed Felix to see his father again. You should have spent more time with him, stayed in Skyhold instead of running off at the Inquisitor’s side once again. You knew it was likely your last chance. He wouldn’t have allowed it, though. He always did have a better sense for managing priorities than you did.

The final paragraph of his letter contained his last request: an expansion of your vows. Find true love and save the world. He’d be watching from the Maker’s side, so he’d know if you ever tried to give up.

 _If you can do the one, you can do the other_ , he wrote. _If you fail one, the other ceases to matter. So really, no pressure._

_I believe in you, Dorian. I believe that one day you’ll be everything you wanted to be and more._

You cried. Not just after you read the letter. You cried for days after. Weeks. You found some quiet, forgotten corner of Skyhold where no one would see you and you cried.

At some point it occurred to you to see if Alexius had been informed. He hadn’t.

 _I loved Felix. Not like… As a friend, a brother,_ you say, irritated that even now you have to explain yourself. Only the truth should matter. _If anything you could have done would have saved him, I would have joined you in a heartbeat._

 _If you had joined me in the beginning, maybe it could have_ , he replied from his cell.

You leave it at that.

“Mm, what are you thinking about?” Cesare asks, finally waking.

You’re thinking that that Felix was right all those years ago. The wisest of you all, as usual. Loving someone is so much more, so much deeper than friendship. It’s just as grand as he predicted and just as terrifying as you predicted. Some days you feel as if it could consume you, drive you mad, and leave your ashes behind in its wake. All you have to hold on to is him, this maddening creature who fights monsters without the slightest hint of fear but blushed scarlet the first time he asked to come to your quarters. The only thing that sustains you is the knowledge that he needs you just as badly. You see it sometimes in the way that he touches you. Determination and abject terror all in a single action.

“Many things,” you say, pressing closer along his back while your hand gently strokes down across his sternum. You can faintly feel his heart pick up under your fingertips. “Where would you like me to start?”

“You seem to be headed in a fine direction,” he replies coyly, grabbing the thigh you’ve hooked over his hip.

“I love you,” you say in Tevene. You’re scared it’s still too much, the same old fears haunting you even now. But you know in your heart what you feel for him could be nothing less than love, the kind of love that makes sappy romance tales suddenly make sense.

He says something back in the old tongue of the Elvhen before turning to kiss you. You can understand his words no more than he can understand yours, yet somehow you suspect you understand the sentiment behind them.

You think Felix would approve, and that means more to you than anything anyone else could have to say on the matter.

Now all that’s left is to save the world.


End file.
